


of imagination all compact

by papyrocrat



Category: Dollhouse
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-19
Updated: 2010-10-19
Packaged: 2017-11-17 14:49:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/552750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/papyrocrat/pseuds/papyrocrat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title is, of course, from A Midsummer Night's Dream.</p>
    </blockquote>





	of imagination all compact

**Author's Note:**

> Title is, of course, from A Midsummer Night's Dream.

_Caroline is beautiful_ , Bennett thinks.It’s not affection or admiration, just a qualitative observation no different than the firmness of the ground beneath her feet.She’s beautiful as she blinks sleep out of her eyes and pulls her hair up without looking for their smudged mirror, and in the rare moments when she actually curls up with her battered textbook on human trafficking in Central Europe, and when she coaxes Bennett to movie nights at the student union.

Caroline’s loveliness is a constant, as dependable as the speed of sound, so Bennett is sure Caroline is still beautiful the first time Caroline drops the tiny brush she’d been holding to Bennett’s eyelids, leans over the chair, and kisses her.It’s hesitant and searching, more like Bennett than Caroline, and that more than anything is what makes Bennett open her eyes in surprise.

Caroline pulls back, looking as surprised and breathless as Bennett feels.“I’m sorry, Bennie.I shouldn’t’a…I’m sorry.”She takes the two short steps away from the desk, where her knees buckle onto her bed.She looks down at her hands.

“Because you think you’ve upset me?Or because you regret it?” _Sorry_ is a word with too many meanings, Bennett thinks.Words can be precise and weighty all at once. _Gold_ and _arsenic_ and _silver_ manage it, their deadly luminosity dancing eternally with a measurable atomic weight.Words like _sorry_ are slippery.

Caroline blinks, as if she’s trying to decide which question to answer.Bennett goes on.“Well, if it helps, you haven’t upset me.”

“We just…haven’t talked about that stuff.And I didn’t mean to, you know.”

They’d talked about such things, lying out on a quad between Caroline’s sheets and the southwestern sun, mostly about Caroline’s old boyfriends and crushes Bennett invented to keep up with Caroline’s stories.She’s lying a little to Caroline, but she figures it’s worthwhile in the greater cause of keeping Caroline’s shoulder boosting her own.

“Oh.You mean.Because we’re girls.”She always gets a little reckless once she’s solved a puzzle, the mystery of the _sorry_ , so she smiles.“Well, experimentation is a valid method of opening necessary dialogue.”

“Huh?”

“I mean, I think we did just talk about it, and decide we’re not bothered by it.”

Caroline’s eyes flicker down at her hands for one last moment, and Bennett follows her gaze as Caroline’s hands stroke the length of her thighs indecisively.When she looks back up, Caroline is something more than beautiful, something deep and resilient and dark like a well when she asks Bennett what happens after dialogue has been _opened_ , and before she’s even finished her question Bennett’s gravitated towards Caroline, as if they should never be farther apart than the length of their two noses leaned against each other.

This time it’s Bennett who kisses Caroline; Bennett who trusts Caroline to open her mouth and let her in, and Bennett who lands on top when they fall a million miles through space to land on Caroline’s bed.

Caroline swallows her up, and Bennett thinks maybe she is beautiful too.

Afterward, they lay in the dark and talk about the inanities of the hours they’ve spent apart that day.Bennett knows they were qualitatively few, but in hindsight they feel impossibly long. _All things are relative_ , she thinks, _who is she to quibble with Einstein?_

Caroline tells her about how she’d been the only one to giggle aloud at _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ in her 3:30, half poking fun at herself and half looking to Bennett for solidarity among the philistines.

“I mean, _I kiss the wall’s hole_?Bet Thisbe didn’t talk to her mother with that dirty mouth.”The laugh that inflates Bennett’s cheeks is rich and low, as Caroline presses her own mouth to Bennett’s shoulder.

Bennett has always quite liked plays within plays, and she tries to explain it to Caroline.About how the characters themselves need to recognize their worst fears, like the deaths of Pyramus and Thisbe, so the audience can tell their happy ending isn’t too saccharine, the trajectory of their happiness blasting though the clouds and out of sight.

“But still.Bottom and Flute.For real?How is that not funny?”

“Good point.”

“What about you, Bennie?”Bennett’s had a day of her own, and there was nothing amusing about it.As she starts to tell Caroline of their imploding clinical trial, her very first, her mind slips away from the perfection of Caroline’s cotton sheets around her calves.

“It’s quite superstitious, I know, but I can’t help feeling like this is a bad sign.What if Rossum decides I’m not useful?If I’m holding them back?These tests are important.”

Caroline turns on her side to give her a confident smile.“What are you talking about, Bennie?Smart girl like you?You’re going to fix everything.Change the world.”

Bennett shakes her head even as she glows with the praise.“I can understand the world, Caroline.You’re the one who will change it.”

Caroline pauses, and her powerful voice goes quiet.“You really think so, Bennie?”

Bennett stares at the ceiling.“No.”She feels the smile break over her face as she turns back to Caroline.“I _know_.”


End file.
